Mets – Yankees 2000 World Series – Clemens goes “Bats”

Baseball was always a big part of my upbringing, my grandfather made sure of that.  As long as I can remember, I had the New York Yankees crammed down my throat and for that I am incredibly thankful.  I was also incredibly lucky that my family had season tickets for over 30 years and spent a majority of my summers at the house that Ruth built (rip).  This also made my family some of the first people to be offered tickets to playoff games and World Series games.

Source: sportschump.com

On the evening of October 22, 2000, I ventured into the hallowed halls of the old Yankee Stadium for Game 2 of the World Series to see a game that would later be dubbed as “The Bat Incident” game.  Due to events that occurred earlier in the season, Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens and Mets catcher Mike Piazza had some bad blood between them.  When Piazza came up for his first at-bat against Clemens, his bat cracked and shattered sending a piece flying towards Clemens.  In what seemed like retaliation, Clemens threw the piece of the bat back at Piazza as he was running towards first.  A face-to-face encounter between Clemens and Piazza shortly followed along with both the Yankees and Mets benches dumped out into the field.

Being 14 at the time, I was excited to possibly see and all out brawl transpire between the two New York teams, and was slightly let down when that didn’t happen.  However, the Yankees secured a win that evening which was enough to have me leave with a smile.  The Yankees went on to eventually win the Series, just 1 of 5 I’ve been lucky enough to see in my lifetime.

by Valerie M.